“What’s up with the Suburban Girls’ case?” I asked. His eyelids quivered over his dark eyes and he shook his head. “Anything on the Cadillac?”
“Not yet,” he said, fidgeting his hands around his beer bottle. “The computer is humming on the quadrillion combinations.”
“When was the Suburban dumped?” I used the word Suburban to stay detached, but I still swallowed some water forming in my throat.
“After eight this morning,” Lake said. “It stopped raining around then. She left home for swimming practice at seven. At least we know one asshole is doing the murders, no copycats—yet.”
There’s always copycats in a city like Atlanta. “You giving out particulars?”
“Only to sweet faces like yours,” he said, sending my heart into orbit. He went on, “She’s from Dunwoody. Thirteen years old. Dad’s a traveling man, on his way home from San Francisco. Her mother passed away last year. Rich folks. She had a nanny. Didn’t arrive home after the swim session. The nanny called the county police. Amber alert put out on the Caddy. Killer’s got the same MO. Kidnap in the ’burbs, dump in the city.”
I worried about the fret lines around his eyes, because I knew he was thinking of his own little girl. I heard a noise like static behind me and turned the barstool. Mia, the restaurant owner, stood waiting for us to notice her. She asked, “You ready to eat?”
“What’s for dessert?” Lake asked.
The man and his sweet tooth.
Mia said, “Spumoni and a nice almond chocolate crème brûlée.”
“One of each,” Lake said. We slipped off the barstools and took our beers into the narrow, low-lit dining room. Our heels clicked across the black-lacquered concrete floor, past fantastic wall murals painted by starving artists for free meals.
We ordered. Me, the light and fantastic veal parmigiana; Lake, the loaded pizza.
“Was the drive to Monroe useful?” he asked.
“I think so,” I answered, then drank from my beer bottle. “Eileen and Kinley are definitely not hiding out there.” I decided not to tell him about the Chevy Caprice, since he liked to worry about me. I said, “I need to know a whole lot more than I do about Bradley Dewart Whitney.”
“What have you and Portia got against this poor man?”
“He is definitely not a poor man. Portia shares my odd feelings about this case. How did he influence his ex-wife’s decision to flee, if she did flee?”
“If? Any reason to think she didn’t?”
Adele Carter’s words came back, but I hesitated about bringing homicide into the case with a homicide expert sitting beside me. “The FBI and the local law confirm they’re gone.”
“Why did you hesitate?”
“Whitney rankles,” I said. “Maybe it’s the academic looking and living too rich. He’s secretive about money and tight as the proverbial tick. He’s also arrogant because he’s an academic. But, unlike most academics, he’s too concerned about his appearance and what others think.”
“You forgot to mention concern for his daughter.”
“It’s there somewhere, I suppose.”
Mia set wine balloons in front of us and poured the Chianti Reserve she’d let breathe for ten minutes.
After she went into the kitchen, Lake looked at me like he knew what I was about to ask. His chin went down, and the dark in his eyes nearly touched his lashes. “Do you know how many children are kidnapped by the noncustodial parent?”
I made a big show of rolling my eyes. I lived in the knowledge.
As I knew he would, he gave me his I-give-in smile. “I’ll look into him. I have nothing else to do these days.”
The urge to kiss him was never far from my lips. I reached over and caressed his cheek with one hand and batted my eyelashes like a good Southern belle. “Ah’m evah grateful.”
“Where’s he live?” he asked, taking my hand and squeezing.
“Off West Paces. Ten Old Country Place.”
His low whistle rippled on the air. “What kind of academic is this guy? Stock market guru?”
“A college professor. A curriculum specialist.”
“How old’s he?”
“Thirty-fivish.”
“He inherit, or rob a bank?”
“That’s what you’re going to find out.”
“Okay, so we got this thirty-fivish academic who lives on multimillionaire’s row, whose girl has not been sent home from Palm Springs.” His eyes livened. “Any chance for a trip?” He was partial to places where he could climb steep, dangerous rocks.
“If the PSPD doesn’t come up with Mrs. Cameron and her daughter soon, I’ll be off to the desert. I’ve left messages at the PS cop station and at the FBI bureau there. No one’s returned my calls. I hope they’ll let me into their territory.” I twisted my mouth as if a notion struck. “You got plenty of time off owed you. Come with me, grease me in.”
“Then for sure, they wouldn’t let you near the city limits.”
I grinned, because a bona fide male police officer invaded territory, while a female, state-contracted investigator didn’t.
His cell went off. It makes the craziest noises, like a squirrel shrieking through too many nuts. He waved a hand, not bothering to take it from its holster on his waistband. “Foof it,” he said, and I grinned. He was trying to tone down the profanity because his daughter was five and lived with him every other weekend.
The cell continued to shriek. He checked the number. “Shit.”
“Duty calling?”
He flipped it open, listened for ten seconds, then pressed END. He looked into my eyes. “The father of the dead girl just got back in town. I hate this work I’m in.”
Lake signaled Mia and threw a wad of bills on the table. Outside, the evening heat walloped me in the face. We hurried over broken bricks to the parking lot. At my car, I wrapped my arms around his waist and looked into his eyes. “Put your feelings in a box and shut the lid tight. Isn’t that what they taught us at the Academy?”
“Sure,” he said, kissing my forehead. “I do it about as good as you do.”
5
Lake lives on Castleberry Hill. The old cotton warehouse is two blocks from the railroad yards that split Atlanta north from south. Back when the city was a rail depot in the wilderness, they called it Terminus. As the population grew, the citizens didn’t cotton to the name. A doting father renamed the city Marthasville, after his daughter. That name didn’t quite capture the imaginations of townspeople, either, and, a couple of years later, a railroad engineer suggested the name Atlanta. The fabled name stuck.
I turned on Peters Street. Most of the warehouses, like the John Deere I passed, had been gutted and rebuilt as high-priced lofts going for almost a million. The cotton warehouse of my destination was not one of those. It, like Lake, lived in the raw.
I parked the Saab in the visitor’s parking lot across the street and gathered my brief case, laptop, running shoes, sweater, and whatever else I valued, and left the car unlocked. Bad idea to lock it. The homeless broke windows if they couldn’t jimmy them. Not to steal the car, but to sleep in it.
Crossing the street, I looked up at the third story. The high, double-hung windows were raised from the bottom. Green curtains flapped out. “No AC tonight,” I grumbled. I wondered if Lake’s feelings would be hurt if I went home to my cottage where the air conditioner was as faithful as my homeless cat, Mr. Brown. But in the next instant, Lake’s captivating face rose in my mind and my pulse picked up. A knot tightened deep down. No going home tonight. Too edgy.
My head brushed the cord that hung from one of Lake’s windows. His doorbell was an old clanger that he’d mounted on a curtain bracket. He also had a mirror set up where he could see the street and anyone standing where I stood on the single-step stoop, now in the act of unlocking the wide loading door.
Inside the stifling hall, the mail was piled on a table made from concrete blocks and boards. Laboring up the narrow, steep steps to the beat of live rap music,
my spirit lifted. One of Lake’s neighbors was a damn fine photographer and a so-so rapper. We all have our ways of relaxing.
Inside Lake’s tin-ceilinged loft, I flipped on the big fans mounted at the four corners of the enormous interior. They remind me of an airplane taking off. The bathroom in the corner is the only lath and plaster room in the place. Divided lengthwise by an oriental carpet running over the heart pine floor, moveable screens separate the other “rooms.” In the sitting area, leather sofas and chairs crouch around a stone coffee table. Lake had mounted a big-screen HDTV on the brick wall. I never saw it on unless Susanna, Lake’s daughter, was visiting. Susanna has her own partitioned room across from the sitting room. Her mama isn’t happy her precious lives in a loft two days out of twelve, but Suze loves the place, especially the two cats that keep the rats away
I carried my things around a carved wooden screen and plopped my briefcase onto an old commander’s chair. My laptop went onto the rolltop desk next to a window. Between the window and the fans, it gets pretty breezy, so Lake weighs his blow-away-ables with crystalline rocks he’s collected on climbing expeditions.
In the bedroom, the king-sized mattress and box springs are too big for the old brass headboard, and, like it, the chiffoniers and chests are antiques. Lake and I finally completed their refinishing a couple of months ago.
The place wasn’t cooling down, and I fanned myself with an old funeral home fan. The temperature didn’t inspire work, and a strange current in the air caused me to go to the window. The city was dark, the moon just a sliver, the streets stone empty. A Coca-Cola sign—a huge Coke bottle cap mounted on a pole—turned and flashed every ten seconds. Why did it make me think of Whitney? He hadn’t been garish. He’d been smug and unctuous. With the next flash of the Coke sign, I heard myself whisper into the night. He doesn’t matter. It’s the child.
My mind drifted back to that summer day when I was sixteen and working in our garden. I heard a sharp cry. Dropping the hoe, I lit out for the swimming pool three houses down. The boy went under with what looked like the last gasp. The next few minutes are a blur in my memory, but I’ll always think of the man he grew into. We have dinner at least once a year. I pray he outlives me; I don’t think I could stand it if he didn’t.
Boy, I can really sink into melancholia, just wallow around in it. So surface, girl, get to the Whitney case.
My first thought was Kinley was probably in Los Angeles living it up with her mother, who, I suspected, thrilled at being a pain in Bradley Whitney’s ass. I’d be.
I fired up the laptop, then pulled up the telephone numbers in California.
* * * * *
An answering device picked up my first call. “Thank you for calling the Cameron home. We are unable to talk right now. Please leave a message and we will return your call as soon as we can. It would be helpful if you explained the nature of your call.”
I thought I’d keep Arlo Cameron guessing. “This is Moriah Dru in Atlanta. Please call me at 404-103-9992.” I got the feeling someone at the other end of the line listened, but then my mama said I was born with a caul covering my face, which, she said, gave me a sixth sense and also meant that I would never drown. Knowing that gives me so much comfort.
At the Palm Springs PD, a different duty officer told me that the detective in charge of the Whitney case was out.”
I asked, “What’s his name?”
“I can’t tell you,” the telephone cop said, as if I’d asked for his bank account and social security numbers. “Where’d you say you’re from?”
I had to back up, sound sweeter. “Down here in Atlanta. It’s where a little girl named Kinley Whitney lives.” He didn’t say anything. “She was visiting her mother in your city. I’ve been out there. Great place.” No response. “She and her mother, whose name is Eileen Cameron, have disappeared.” He grunted. “I’m an investigator with Child Trace.”
“Child Trace?”
“I’m working for Judge Portia Devon at Juvenile Justice. Please call the Atlanta Police Department. They know me there.”
He said, “I’ll leave a note for Detective LeRoi to call you.”
Any ol’ time is fine. “I’d appreciate that very much. Could you please tell me if the mother and child have returned, or been heard from?”
“No, ma’am.”
“They haven’t returned or been heard from? Or you can’t tell me?”
“Neither.”
Thanks, jackass.
I told him politely that I appreciated his help.
6
I’d no sooner gotten to sleep than Lake’s land line rang. It jangled three times before his answering machine picked up. His voice said: “Leave a message. I’ll get back to you.”
The caller said, “Ricky, this is Jeannie. Remember me? Frankie’s last month? I waited for you to call. I guess you forgot my number. It’s 404-089-4232. I’ll wait some more. Or I’ll be at Frankie’s Thursday night.”
There hadn’t been many calls like that since we became lovers, but whenever they come, I get teeth-gnashing mad. I went to the kitchen, fetched two cubes, poured two fingers of Blue Sapphire, and wondered, What in hell am I doing in this oven?
Back in the bedroom, I watched the Coke cap flash and turn and thought about how frustrated I was, and how scorching the room was, and how I was going to make Lake tell me who Jeannie was and why she thought she could call up at all hours of the night, and why she had his unlisted number, and why hadn’t he told her about me—us? When I’d worn myself out with that crap, I laid down—knowing I couldn’t sleep. But soon, I was dozing.
I woke when Lake lowered himself lightly onto the bed. By the light of the Coke sign, I watched him through half-closed eyes. He had to see the blinking light on his phone, but he didn’t play the message. He must have known . . . .
He removed his shoes and socks and then stood and took off his clothes. He eased himself onto the mattress again. Tonight he didn’t make little noises that would wake me, and I continued to feign sleep. To hell with him and Jeannie at Frankie’s. Besides, it was too beastly hot to make love.
I’m sure the time that elapsed wasn’t as long as it seemed, and I sensed Lake knew I was awake. He turned toward me, and I could feel his eyes. They made me burn with a different kind of heat, one that transcended the swelter of the room and Jeannie’s phone message. Rolling close to him, my leg touched his. He rose to an elbow and said, “What made you decide?”
“A curable itch.”
In the next instant, an explosion rattled the windows and seemed to suck the air from the room. The blast was followed by an unnatural stillness and a light aura. Something started to sizzle, and my ears popped.
“What the hell!” Lake cried.
I shot up knowing it wasn’t a blown transformer—a frequent happening here. We bolted to the windows. Across the street, a car blazed. Brilliant flames and white smoke lit the night. “My God,” I cried. It was the Saab. “My car.”
I grabbed a pair of trousers, jammed my feet into them, and slung my bra around my chest. Where was my shirt? Lake struggled into the clothes he’d abandoned by the bed. He shoved his sockless feet into loafers. Buttoning up, I looked out the window again. People dashed around in a frenzy. Clutching my sneakers, I raced behind Lake, out the door, down the steps two at a time. He shoved through the crowd. Hopping and stopping, I got my feet into my shoes and followed. We got as close to the burning Saab as we could. Past my car, I saw a white car angled oddly in its parking space, but not on fire.
The photographer who lived upstairs ran up. “Lieutenant?” His fearful eyes took up half his face. “Man, there’s someone in that car.”
Lake looked at me. Stunned, my jaw hung open, my thoughts going to the homeless souls who slept in the car. I shook my head. Would Thunderbird wine and a cigarette cause this kind of explosion? I said to Lake, “I left it unlocked, like always.”
I felt people around me move as one. Like me, excited and anguished, not being able
to take our eyes off the hideousness we couldn’t put out.
“Tell me exactly what you saw, Lou?” Lake asked the photographer.
The rangy black man said, “Man, I saw the guy hanging out the window when I was crossing the street. I heard something weird, looked back, saw a little light, and then . . .” He spread his hands and flung them up. “Boom.”
Sirens screamed closer. A red station wagon braked at the top of the street. Lake shouted and people pushed back to make way for the assistant chief’s car. Lake said a few words to the man as he got out of his vehicle. Both men went to the back of the wagon. The assistant chief handed Lake a mask, a metal hat, and a black slicker. At the same time, two red fire engines pulled across the curb. Seconds later, firefighters sprayed chemicals from large extinguishers. Dazzling sparks gave way to white smoke that pushed up into the darkness. A rush of anxiety had my pulse pounding.
Lake and the assistant chief walked to my Saab and looked into the back seat. The crowd held its breath. Lake and the chief backed away, their faces telling the story. A collective groan floated across me. My mind stuck on the homeless I knew by sight and by street name. I’d routed them out of my car in the mornings. Poor souls, most were still drunk from the night before. If they were really bad, I’d get coffee and donuts from down the street. They were sorry derelicts, down on their luck, but they were humans who looked for an occasional kind word. And now one was dead, or maybe two —in my beloved Saab.
My thoughts came back to the scene. Lake and the assistant chief had moved to the other car, the one at an angle to mine. Lake broke away and walked to me. “We found our suspect.”
His words seemed irrational. “Suspect?”
“The killer of the Suburban Girls apparently blew himself up in your car.”
The Last Temptation Page 3